Autograph Letter, signed. 8 pp. To Walter Lowrie (Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, New York).

Rev. James M. Priest (?-1883) was born a slave in Kentucky, but freed and educated by a religious woman who emancipated all her slaves on condition that they emigrate to Liberia. Priest received 3 years of higher education at an Indiana Theological Seminary, and was ordained a Presbyterian Minister in April 1843. He and his wife – also a freed slave - then sailed to Liberia, where he remained for the rest of his life. After twenty years of directing a mission at isolated coastal settlements south of Monrovia, Priest served as the country’s Vice President during the American Civil War until he was appointed Associate Justice of the Liberian Supreme Court. Priest stands out among the 60 freed American slaves who became missionaries to Liberia because of his high degree of intelligence and his willingness to take strong issue with the white Protestant gentlemen like Lowrie, a former US Senator, who were his employers. In this letter, written in his fourth year as missionary, he complains of his infrequent contact with (and meager support from) New York, and his difficulties with the natives, ”poor depraved creatures”, who had to be bribed with food and cloth to send their children to his Mission school. The native King also took bribes of cloth and tobacco until he was deposed by greedy men whose only interest was in selling more land to the Government. The new King possessed “a great deal of pride and heathenism… not civilized enough to have any correct ideas about a Missionary.” Despite all the hardships and setbacks he faced, Priest felt “there is a great work to be done in Africa” which “suits my desires as a Minister”. He demanded more assistance from his Yankee benefactors, so that he would not have to go into business to support himself – like a fellow missionary whose commercial ventures had alienated the natives and led to his murder. As the education of American slaves was strictly forbidden in the South – and not particularly encouraged among freedmen in the North - letters written by African-Americans born into slavery are scarce.